Poll results: No third term for Mayor Sly James, and trouble for a new KCI terminal

Kansas City Mayor Sly James was sworn in Saturday at the Gem Theater for his second term.
ALLISON LONG
along@kcstar.com

Mayor Sly James probably won’t get a chance to run for a third term — and a new City Council could have problems getting voters to embrace a single-terminal Kansas City International Airport.

Those are among the conclusions I reached after seeing about 120 responses to an unscientific poll posted Saturday after James and the council were sworn in at the Gem Theater to their four-year terms in office.

Summing up the results:

▪ An overwhelming 81 percent said “no” to the idea that “James will be so popular in a few years that civic and neighborhood leaders will try to kill the city’s two-term limit and allow him to run for a third term.”

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▪ A whopping 70 percent said voters will not love the council’s eventual plan to build a new, single KCI terminal.

▪ By a 53 percent-47 percent margin, respondents said James and the council will not succeed over the next four years in reducing the city’s still-too-high violent crime and murder rates.

▪ Respondents said James will have his first big public clash with council members, in this order, over KCI’s future (36 percent), downtown hotel subsidies (27 percent), streetcar expansion (20 percent) and a higher minimum wage (17 percent).

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